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We initiate the study of a quantity that we call coordination complexity. In a distributed optimization problem, the information defining a problem instance is distributed among $n$ parties, who need to each choose an action, which jointly…
To verify the robustness of a program or protocol, it is common in the computer science community to rely on the theoretical framework of game theory. In particular, if one seeks to enforce a desired property, or specification, despite an…
Nash equilibria are crucial for understanding game behavior and systems in economics, physics, biology, and computer science. A significant application arises from the connection between Nash equilibria and optimization problems . However,…
We prove lower bounds for higher-order methods in smooth non-convex finite-sum optimization. Our contribution is threefold: We first show that a deterministic algorithm cannot profit from the finite-sum structure of the objective, and that…
This paper considers the problem of designing optimal algorithms for reinforcement learning in two-player zero-sum games. We focus on self-play algorithms which learn the optimal policy by playing against itself without any direct…
This paper studies bilinear saddle point problems $\min_{\bf{x}} \max_{\bf{y}} g(\bf{x}) + \bf{x}^{\top} \bf{A} \bf{y} - h(\bf{y})$, where the functions $g, h$ are smooth and strongly-convex. When the gradient and proximal oracle related to…
The simplex method for linear programming is known to be highly efficient in practice, and understanding its performance from a theoretical perspective is an active research topic. The framework of smoothed analysis, first introduced by…
Over the years, researchers have studied the complexity of several decision versions of Nash equilibrium in (symmetric) two-player games (bimatrix games). To the best of our knowledge, the last remaining open problem of this sort is the…
This paper investigates the impact of perturbations on the best-response-based algorithms approximating Nash equilibria in zero-sum games, namely Double Oracle and Fictitious Play. More precisely, we assume that the oracle computing the…
We prove that finding an epsilon-Nash equilibrium in a succinctly representable game with many players is PPAD-hard for constant epsilon. Our proof uses succinct games, i.e. games whose payoff function is represented by a circuit. Our…
We present algorithmic applications of an approximate version of Carath\'{e}odory's theorem. The theorem states that given a set of vectors $X$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$, for every vector in the convex hull of $X$ there exists an…
Nash equilibria provide a principled framework for modeling interactions in multi-agent decision-making and control. However, many equilibrium-seeking methods implicitly assume that each agent has access to the other agents' objectives and…
Since the seminal PPAD-completeness result for computing a Nash equilibrium even in two-player games, an important line of research has focused on relaxations achievable in polynomial time. In this paper, we consider the notion of…
This paper considers convex games involving multiple agents that aim to minimize their own cost functions using locally available information. A common assumption in the study of such games is that the agents are symmetric, meaning that…
Computing approximate Nash equilibria in multi-player general-sum Markov games is a computationally intractable task. However, multi-player Markov games with certain cooperative or competitive structures might circumvent this…
We note that known methods achieving the optimal oracle complexity for first order convex optimization require quadratic memory, and ask whether this is necessary, and more broadly seek to characterize the minimax number of first order…
Wide machine learning tasks can be formulated as non-convex multi-player games, where Nash equilibrium (NE) is an acceptable solution to all players, since no one can benefit from changing its strategy unilaterally. Attributed to the…
In this paper, we address the challenge of Nash equilibrium (NE) seeking in non-cooperative convex games with partial-decision information. We propose a distributed algorithm, where each agent refines its strategy through projected-gradient…
In recent work of Hazan and Krauthgamer (SICOMP 2011), it was shown that finding an $\eps$-approximate Nash equilibrium with near-optimal value in a two-player game is as hard as finding a hidden clique of size $O(\log n)$ in the random…
Motivated by the fact that in many game-theoretic settings, the game analyzed is only an approximation to the game being played, in this work we analyze equilibrium computation for the broad and natural class of bimatrix games that are…